FYI, regular surgical masks are insufficient for protection against COVID-19. A respirator graded n95 or higher is required. Not sure what you mean by “surgical mask”, but want to make sure they’re not regular surgical masks.
[EDIT: You probably shouldn’t read this comment, and instead read this post by Scott Alexander.]
FYI, regular surgical masks are insufficient for protection against COVID-19. A respirator graded n95 or higher is required.
Disclaimer: I’m not an expert.
[EDIT (2020-05-30): you really shouldn’t use the following for updating your beliefs.]
After a quick look at some of the papers mentioned in Elizabeth’s answers here I updated away from the belief that surgical masks are substantially less effective than N95 masks at preventing the wearer from getting infected with the novel coronavirus (it now seems to me likely plausible that surgical masks are not substantially less effective). But I can easily be wrong about that, and the evidence I’ve seen seems to me weak (the papers I’ve seen did not involve the novel coronavirus).
FYI, regular surgical masks are insufficient for protection against COVID-19. A respirator graded n95 or higher is required. Not sure what you mean by “surgical mask”, but want to make sure they’re not regular surgical masks.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/face-mask-new-coronavirus.html
[EDIT: You probably shouldn’t read this comment, and instead read this post by Scott Alexander.]
Disclaimer: I’m not an expert.
[EDIT (2020-05-30): you really shouldn’t use the following for updating your beliefs.]
After a quick look at some of the papers mentioned in Elizabeth’s answers here I updated away from the belief that surgical masks are substantially less effective than N95 masks at preventing the wearer from getting infected with the novel coronavirus (it now seems to me
likelyplausible that surgical masks are not substantially less effective). But I can easily be wrong about that, and the evidence I’ve seen seems to me weak (the papers I’ve seen did not involve the novel coronavirus).After seeing this preprint I’m less confident in my above update.